LAS VEGAS — The Indiana Fever are officially halfway through their 2026 season. How should they feel about their play so far?
“I think we’d like to be further along in terms of our record,” head coach Stephanie White said of her 13-9 team, on pace for 26 wins.
Ask again tomorrow, though. The answer might be different.
The highs are dazzling. Beating Golden State at home thanks to good two-way play, then doing the same versus Atlanta one week later. Scoring a franchise record 113 points in regulation to clobber the Tempo. Holding the Aces (without A’ja Wilson, critically) to 68 points.
The lows are too frequent and often confusing. Losing at home to Washington and Phoenix. Giving up 113 points to Atlanta. Whatever the heck happened in Portland.
What is this team? It’s hard to say. “I think the great thing is that we do have half the season left, right? And we do have an opportunity to continue to grow. The biggest thing is our consistency,” White said of the first half of the Fever’s season. “I think we’ve shown flashes of really good things and we’ve got to continue to grow in consistency.”
The strength of this Indiana Fever group is exactly what their roster makeup suggests it should be: Scoring the basketball. The Fever are second in the league in offensive rating, only behind the Aces. Their shooting efficiency is impressive and pairs well with a league-leading pace.
It’s hard to stop them. As databallr shows, Indiana maintains a potent offense even when they mix and match which of their star players are on the court. There’s a reason they have three All-Stars — all of them are brilliant talents with offensive gifts.
Kelsey Mitchell is averaging a career high in points per game. Caitlin Clark is on pace to be the first player ever to average 20-plus points and 7.5-plus assists per game, and that latter number currently leads the league by a hair. Aliyah Boston, who is third on the team in shots per game, is scoring over 17 points a night (a career high) and pulling in almost nine rebounds.
Sophie Cunningham is shooting 40% from deep. Tyasha Harris has been surging of late. Lexie Hull, Myisha Hines-Allen and Raven Johnson all have their nights. Altogether, that’s how the Fever have become the WNBA’s second-best scoring attack.
It is far from perfect. That group that has their nights? They have off nights, too. Harris took a month or so to get going. Indiana’s reserve frontcourt has been poor.
When the Indiana Fever have their worst outings, turnovers are usually a key cause. They’re fourth in the league in turnover rate, a pivotal factor in several games. Clark, who has the ball most often and makes daring, yet game-changing, averages almost five turnovers per night. Boston is approaching three. Johnson, Hines-Allen and Mitchell all post more than one per game. The Fever have to clean that up.
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The fit of their stars has been just-okay to this point in the season. And yet, the team’s talent level is so high that they grade out as the second-best offense in the league. There’s some low-hanging fruit for improvement on the offensive end, particularly with ball security, but that’s not really where the Fever’s issues lie.
That, very clearly, comes on defense.
The Fever rank ninth in defensive rating, a poor mark for a team that spent so much time working on it during training camp. “We have them,” Cunningham said of the Fever’s defensive schemes in early June. “We have a ton of them. We try to do them; they just break down because we can’t execute.”
That was over a month ago, after the Fever gave up 100 points in a double-digit loss to the Portland Fire. Since then? They’ve allowed triple digits five more times.
To this point in the season, Indiana has allowed their opponents to score 100-plus points on eight different occasions. They’re the third team ever to achieve that “feat” eight times in one season, joining the 2010 Tulsa Shock (eight) and 2014 Dallas Wings (nine). Of course, a high pace leads to higher raw scoring numbers — 11 teams have allowed more than 100 points on multiple occasions this season. But the Fever lead the pack and are on pace to smash the record for most games doing so in a season. (If trends continue, the Sparks, Fire, and Tempo will join them)
Perhaps more discouraging for the Fever is how often defense is the obvious reason for defeat. Indiana has lost four times this season when putting up triple-digit points themselves, the most in WNBA history. Chicago (two) is the only other squad to do that more than once this season, and they are 7-15.
The biggest warts for the Fever come in the possession war. They’ve been strong on the glass, but their turnovers provide so many easy chances for opponents. Meanwhile, the Fever are the second-worst team at forcing turnovers this season. That offsets much of their work on the boards.
And as has been well documented, the Fever can’t stop fouling. “We have to learn how to defend without fouling. I think that’s just the biggest thing,” Hines-Allen said.
Indiana’s opponents lead the league in free throw attempts per game. Even if that alone wasn’t a major concern, free throws slow a game down and force an offense to take the ball out of the net more frequently, which limits transition chances. In tandem, that limits the Fever’s ability to use their pace to their advantage.
Even without looking at numbers, the Fever have several perimeter players who can be more stout on the defensive end. And their reserve frontcourt has given them little in terms of paint presence on a night-in, night-out basis — though Hines-Allen and Makayla Timpson certainly have strong defensive nights or moments.
Beyond offensive and defensive overviews, White pointed out that player absences have hurt the team’s ability to find consistency. “There are a lot of different pieces that we have to put together, and still managing multiple games without Caitlin on the floor and the opportunity to continue to mesh,” White said. “The great thing is, we still have half the season left. And we do have an opportunity to continue to grow.”
So what should the Indiana Fever make of this? Ask again tomorrow. Maybe they’ll be riding a high after a huge win, maybe they’ll feel sunken after a strange defeat.
The Fever have a tougher schedule in the second half of the season, but they improved in the second half of the 2025 campaign. They are hoping for the same this year. Better health, particularly for Clark, would help, but generally they’ve been healthy — 10 Fever players have suited up in at least 17 of their 22 games.
Consistency comes with time and reps. There is still half a season left. But the Fever hoped to be farther along at this point, record-wise, than they are. Stacking wins in the final 22 games will require fewer nights during which the Fever don’t look like they just met each other and instead find connection and steadiness.
“I think we’ve shown flashes of really good things, and we’ve got to grow in consistency of that,” White said. “We’ve got to continue for our players to be stars in their role for us and understand that it’s going to take all of us, collectively.”
“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is out now!
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
